One Nation Under Blog

Porcupine went to see the Second City Touring Company production, live at the Strand Theatre in Rockland, Maine, called 'One Nation, Under Blog'.

Second City has been around for ages, giving comics like Peter Boyle, Bill Murray, Andrea Martin, Harold Ramis, John & Jim Belushi, Mike Myers, Steve Carell, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Tina Fey, Joan Rivers, John Candy, Bonnie Hunt, Stephen Colbert, Chris Farley, Harold Ramis, Rick Moranis and more their start as improv comedians. New talent combined with blogs and politics as subject matter seemed irresistable.

So Porcupine was a mite disappointed when the word 'blog' wasn't mentioned from start to finish.

That said, it was a good show. The six young comics were on a tour, and were bringing live, Second City style, comedy to hundreds of theatres. They had a few prepared sketches to start off. One was an office party - "Thanks for bringing the sandwiches! Punch! OK, everybody, let's get started. I'd like to thank you all for attending the annual Company Outing - - - - CHRISTOPHER'S GAY!!!!" Or a sketch with husbands vs. wives playing Pictionary, with the memorable line from a defeated, shreiking husband, "WE will keep playing, if I have to cut off my hand and draw with the bloody stump!!!!"

They asked the audience for promts - one was for 'an object, no matter how odd or exotic'. A flat, Maine accent drawled from the back of the hall, "Egg Separator!". While they did a passable skit, it would seem that wasn't the sort of unusual object they were used to getting! Later, they asked for news stories or current events. People called out - Chinese Olympics, Obama vs. Hillary - and so on, but then "Taser Tag!" shouted one voice. All of the cast members looked up slowly, thinking, "Uh, huh..." "It's a local thing" (and the Sheriff's office may be in big trouble with the County Commissioners over the drunken tasering of a deputy at a bachelor party gone out of hand). Tim responded, "So everything we've heard about Maine is true...."

The next day, Porcupine saw two of the young comics trying to climb up onto a scrap metal parking lot of the World's Largest Lobster, in his hotel parking lot, while simultaneously taking their own picture. Porcupine complimented them on the show, and they replied that Rockland was the end of their nationwide tour, and they while they were happy to be heading home. But they found the ocean and the small town atmosphere amazing. Porcupine agreed, and wished them well, as he headed across the street to start the morning at the Rock City Coffee Roasters.

Maybe later HE would blog......

Return to Maine - 2008

Porcupine has been spending time in the Great, not Terribly White, North - opening the hut for summer. Only three weeks ago, the summer burrow looked like this -


Now, despite a few patches of snow in the shadows, the ground is clear, the rivers are running strong and the great melt has begun. It was still a little chilly, so Porcupine chose to stay across from the Lighthouse Museum and travel over to the hut. Also, there were entertainment opportunities in Rockland, which Porcupine will detail in another post.

Still, Porcupine worries about Maine. It's getting citified, less rural. It saddens him, as he has watched the same process gradually transform Cape Cod over the last few decades, and he hopes the same sort of suburbanization won't afflict Maine as well.

But perhaps not all is lost. Porcupine was eating lunch is the most excellent Brass Compass Restaurant - enjoying the Daily Duo. Wee fried Maine shrimp paired with tiny fried bay scallops - and the taste of bay scallops is unmistakeable, as the sweet juice explodes in your mouth when you bite down, so unlike the grotesque chopped-up spongy sea scallops that get palmed off on you sometimes - with hand-cut french fries which taste like...potatos. A heaping plate, all for $7.50.

While enjoying this splendid meal, a whiny lady from Noo Yawk was snivelling to her bored husband that she couldn't finish such a huge portion, it would be cold and greasy, and did her new nails make her look like a high class prostitute (Porcupine was of the opnion they did, but thought the lady was a little optimistic about her success in such a career)? Unbidden, a slender teenaged girl who was a waitress went to the table and said, "Here. Let me give you some tinfoil, to keep the food fresh and warm so you can take it with you."

The child came of her own accord. And she called it 'tinfoil'.

Maine is still Maine. Porcupine was so cheered that he had that Lemon-Blueberry bundt cake with the crumbled maple topping after all....

More To come...

Fake Outrage or Real Issue?

Porcupine enjoys reading different newspapers when he is away. Since he is currently in the middle of a white-out snowstorm in Maine, he has had ample time to read two stories in the Sunday Bangor Daily News, and to consider them in light of one another.

The first is a front page story, Section A, which is part of a series called ‘Mainers in Crisis’, sub headed "Some of these stories have not been told because the victims of $100-per-barrel oil feel to embarrassed by their circumstances to reveal them." Knowing Maine, Porcupine doesn’t have any trouble believing that assertion. The story of the McAlpine family is one of a dozen stories featured.

The Cliff Notes version of the story of Bruce McAlpine and June Days is as follows – Last fall, McAlpine’s towing business burned down, forcing him to look for temporary work since unemployment doesn’t cover the self-employed. When their son, Bryce, was born in October he spent 49 days in neonatal intensive care, eating up the family’s heating oil savings with drives from Ellsworth to Bangor; Maine has a new higher gas tax, so a car costs even more to drive than in Mass. And public transportation is non-existent. When they brought the baby home at Thanksgiving, the oil tank was empty. McAlpine couldn’t find a heating oil company which would deliver fewer than 100 gallons, so he bought fuel a few gallons at a time for a while and brought it home in a jug. They have Styrofoam panels over the windows in their trailer to conserve heat, and leave the oven open after dinner is cooked. By not paying the electric bill – which can’t be turned off until April – they got together the money for oil, all the time knowing that they have a huge debt to pay in the spring unless Bruce can find regular work.

On the front page of Section B, a Bangor man whose company had a contract to clean the floors of area Hannaford Bros. supermarkets has been charged in federal court with employing illegal aliens and harboring illegal aliens at his Fruit Street residence. The investigation of Manuel Cornejo, 29, began a year ago with the arrest of one of his former employees. Cornejo is an American citizen but lived in El Salvador before moving to the United States, according to the U.S Attorney’s Office. Eight employees, working at local supermarkets, all had false Social Security numbers, and four were living at Mr. Cornejo’s house. Hannaford Supermarkets has not been charged (something Mitt Romney, who was caught in a similar situation, can take comfort from). Interestingly, the supermarket contracted with a Danvers, MA firm, Cleaning Services Group, which had hired the Bangor firm using illegal immigrants as labor. It seems odd that this Mass. firm did not notice that Mr. Cornejo wasn’t withholding any taxes or unemployment from the wages of his workers.

So – we have a lifelong Mainer, McAlpine, desperate for work in the Bangor area, and an El Salvadoran bringing worker to Maine for the jobs 'Americans won’t do'. How moved do you think Mr. McAlpine is by arguments that illegal immigrants should have tuition tax breaks? Or that El Salvador is lacking in economic opportunity and freedom?

Like Porcupine’s friend Dan Kennedy, will Bruce McAlpine regard illegal immigration as “fake outrage over a non-issue”, as Kennedy states HERE and HERE? Or will he see it as an issue to rival the Iraq War when he chooses who to vote for for President?

Off the Grid Once Again

Once again, Porcupine is leaving for the great state of Maine

Vacationland!

The Way Life Shold Be!

Porcupine is off the the movies - actually, around 30 of them. Since 2001, Porcupine has arranged his schedule so as to be able to attend the Maine International Film Festival - every bit as good as Nantucket, but a steak in Waterville costs $9.99!

Some MIFF films have gone on to fame and fortune - American Splendor, Sideways, Little Miss Sunshine, The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill, Pollock. Others have enjoyed a robust art house audience - Postmen in the Mountains, The Secret Life of Dentists, Factotum, Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress. But Porcupine's favorites are the ones which were never hits at all - 13 Tzamati, The Mission, Raise the Red Lantern, the Lighthouse Keeper's Daughter, Sardar, Islander, Broadcast News (no, not that one, a Chinese movie with the same name).

There have been big guns there - Walter Hill talking about making The Warriors, Peter Fonda about his early career and Dennis Hopper. Perhaps the best was when Jonathan Demme told an audience of about 50 that we were the first people to see his new documentary, The Agronomist, and he asked us to critique it for him! Still, Porcupine enjoys others even more - Jay Cocks talking about how he turned a sociological treatise into a script for Gangs of New York, and how he turned Edith Wharton's complex novel into the script for The Age of Innocence. A director from Kahzakstan - the REAL one - explaining that the Soviet moved all its film making facilities there during WWII to protect it from invading armies, and now it is the Hollywood of the Balkans.

So - Taiwanese director Johnny To has a new film, and Steve Buscemi has directed and starred in another. Porcupine will be away, with no electricity and no real newscasts (it was when he spent 4 days there before learning that JFK, Jr. had crashed his plane and turned Cape Cod into a media circus that he first determined to purchase acreage there). Oh, a hot spot may be hit now and again, and the Sunday songs for McCain and Obama will go up - but it won't be the avid interest of day to day. Politics will just have to carry on.